During his speech at an interfaith service in Boston on April 18, Pres. Obama told Boston and the nation, “We'll keep going. We will finish the race.” It appears Grenada Elementary school seventh grader Nic Reel-Peel was thinking the same thing when he approached his teacher with an idea earlier in the week.

On Tuesday April 16, the day after the Boston Marathon bombing, Reel-Peel approached his teachers and told them he wanted to organize a one-mile run for his entire school as a symbolic gesture of support for the city of Boston and the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing. “We’re going to run the last mile for the people who couldn’t finish the marathon,” he explained. The slogan for the event – “You won’t be alone to show you care” – was also drafted by Reel-Peel.

On Thursday, all of the school’s 170 students lined up on the athletic field at Grenada Elementary in the bright spring sunshine and counted down, “Three. Two. One. For Boston,” they yelled in unison, and began their one-mile run.

Reel-Peel said he had help in organizing the event from friends Isaiah Greenman, Terrance Fleek, Libby Phillips and Hayden Kautz.

Greenman, a third-grade student, said he was very excited to be involved in the event because he really wanted to help people. “I think I’m going to do that for a living,” he added.

Shannon Curie, the schools intervention specialist, helped the group with the project. She said she was very proud of all the kids and their desire to reach out and show their support.

“At Grenada we spend a lot of time talking about respect and giving back and showing gratitude and all those things,” said Curie. “And throughout the year we’ve really focused on ways that they can contribute and show respect for others. So this was an opportunity to tie that in and also be aware of other things that are happening.”

Reel-Peel and several other students made video recordings of the run and plan to create a Youtube video to share online and possibly with victims of the Boston tragedy.